CARL WIELAND

'Carl Wieland' is an Australian young Earth creationist, author, and speaker. He is the Managing Director of Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers in Genesis - Australia), a Christian apologetics ministry.^[1]

Contents

Biographical & Career Information

Controversy and criticism

Controversy and Criticism: A Response

Rebuttal to above

Books

References

External links

Biographical & Career Information

In 1978, Wieland founded the family-oriented, evangelical magazine ''Ex Nihilo'' (later called ''Creation Ex Nihilo'', and now called simply ''Creation''. ''Creation'' magazine is published by Creation Ministries International Australia and now has subscribers in over 140 countries.
Wieland is a medical doctor by training (Adelaide University, South Australia), and is a past-president of the Christian Medical Fellowship of South Australia. He stopped practising in 1986, after a "head-on impact with a fully laden fuel tanker at highway speeds" [2] in 1986. Despite five and a half months in hospital and more than fifty operations, he maintains an active speaking and writing schedule, [3] as well as the editing 'Creation' magazine and running the CMI Australia offices. Wieland's ordeal is outlined in his book, ''Walking Through Shadows''.
With the passing of Dr. Henry Morris of the Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Wieland is now considered by many to be one of the most knowledgeable and respected persons within the young earth creationist movement.

Controversy and criticism

Dr. Gary S. Hurd wrote that "Carl Wieland is the major creationist 'dino-blood' source and has presented his distorted interpretations of dinosaur biomolecule research through the Answers in Genesis Ministry: ''Creation Ex Nihilo.''"talkorigins.org Hurd argued in two pages of that work "Wieland has shifted from 'fossil bones' to 'unfossilized dinosaur bone' and claims that a popularised account of one paleontological study is reason enough to abandon the sciences." The source for Wieland's "entire claim of cellular preservation in dinosaur age fossils originated from a selective misrepresentation of a popular magazine account of research by Mary Schweitzer titled ''The Real Jurassic Park''." Hurd noted "this article was published in 1997 by a magazine called ''Earth'', a for-profit magazine focused on geology and paleontology for the general public. The magazine folded after three volumes," which "the former Editor, Josh Flishman, has personally acknowledged to me that Earth was a popularisation, and not a scientific journal."
Hurd went on to debunk Wieland's claims noting the article's "lack of permineralisation (the infilling of the intravascular spaces with minerals, and recrystalisation of the bone mineral itself)" of residual blood products "is the reason that Schweitzer could loosely refer to the bone as 'not completely fossilised' in ''The Real Jurassic Park''." It was this claim that "Wieland grossly exaggerates... as 'unfossilised'. [1997: pg. 42]"^[2]
Hurd noted "Schweitzer has told me that she was very surprised that the creationists would latch on to her work like this, as hers is not the oldest reported biomolecule data." Rather, Hurd explained, "there were prior publications of DNA extracted from samples twice as old as her T. rex sample (for example Polinar et al, 1994)." Hurd concludes that "there were also prior reports of immunological responses from biomolecules extracted from dinosaur bone, for example Muyzer et al, 1992."
Two years later Wieland "returned to his misrepresentation of the Schweitzer research in ''Dinosaur bones: Just how old are they really?'' Hurd cited Wieland as an exampe of "the false, or out-of-context quote is a favorite tactic of professional young Earth creationists' efforts to undermine science and reason." Hurd explained that "the only reason that Schweitzer's work should be so corrupted by creationists is her news interviews that mentioned 'cells'" because "cells, in the popular imagination, could be thought of as necessarily recent or "fresh" features."

Controversy and Criticism: A Response

The progressive creationist Hugh Ross published a critique by Gary Moore of Dr Wieland's "dino blood" article http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/606 which relied heavily on Gary Hurd's work. Dr. Wieland responded to it as follows:

''An uninformed reader might think I had written about blood still dripping onto the floor, yet that was nothing like what I said. My article, to which he refers, was about the 1997 discovery, under the microscope, of red blood cells in a segment of unfossilized dinosaur bone. The article did state that the vessels were visible under the microscope, and that there was immunological evidence for the presence of the protein hemoglobin… my article actually quoted Schweitzer as saying that ‘some parts deep inside the long bone of the leg had not completely fossilized.’ So anyone reading the word ‘unfossilized’ in the next sentence would have been fully aware of how I was using the term. The organic material in that section of bone had not been replaced by minerals... ''

''...The point is that the stretchy, pliable stuff that was in the shape of blood vessels, etc. was regarded by Schweitzer, and by all other reasonable people who have read the paper concerned, as remarkably preserved soft tissue, i.e. it has not been replaced by minerals. As quoted in my article, she said that ‘preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before’.'' [ http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3427/ ]

The creationist point is that the fact that soft tissues survive from creatures who were supposed to have died millions of years ago, represents a challenge to long age belief. Dr. David Menton said, "''It certainly taxes one’s imagination to believe that soft tissues and cells could remain so relatively fresh in appearance for the tens of millions of years''". Dr. Wieland added that "''neither my words nor those of my anatomist colleague Dr Menton claim that this (or indeed anything) can prove a young earth, but that it is powerfully, overwhelmingly consistent with it. Certainly it ‘taxes one’s imagination’ less to believe that such structures have survived a few thousand years, as opposed to >65 million. Even the most rabid long-ager would surely have to agree with that simple proposition.''" This represents the totality of Dr. Wieland's claims about "dino blood".
Hurd's comment that ''"there were prior publications of DNA extracted from samples twice as old as her T. rex sample"'' is irrelevant to a careful critique of Dr. Wieland's article, since in the article Dr. Wieland himself noted that ''"The report here of red blood cells in an unfossilized section of dinosaur bone is not the first time such bone has been found."''
Hurd's claim that Wieland would "abandon the sciences" is absurd - CMI regularly comments on the benefits of science based on observation, for example in medicine, technology and other areas. For example, Dr. Don Batten wrote:

''We at CMI are ‘up front’ about our acceptance of revelation (the Bible). Unlike many atheists, we recognize that a philosophy of life does not come from the data, but rather the philosophy is brought to the data and used in interpreting it... 'Creationists have absolutely no problem with operational science', because the evidence drives operational science. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Moslem, a Hindu, or an Atheist, pure water still boils at 100°C at sea level.''[^[3]]

See also Creation Ministries International

Rebuttal to above

We need to distinguish between 2 different "dino blood" instances, one in 1997 and one in 2004.
In 1997, Wieland wrote an article for AIG entitled "Shocking Dinosaur Blood Find" which stated that Schweitzer had found "actual red blood cells" and hemoglobin inside an "unfossilized" T rex bone. Here's Wieland's article: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/blood.asp.
His claims: 1) there was hemoglobin, 2) there were red blood cells, 3) the bone was unfossilized, are stated nowhere in Schweitzer's paper: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/12/6291
read the paper for yourself and check the validity of Wieland's claims. Schweitzer posited evidence of ""[H]eme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products," not the same thing as hemoglobin, and a VERY far cry from "red blood cells." Wieland did specifically say the bone was unfossilized; Schweitzer never once said this in her paper, mentioning only lack of permineralization (minerals filling open spaces in the bone). and diagenetic alteration (cracking). Wieland does not cite Schweitzer's paper as a reference, he instead cites an article in Earth magazine. This suggests he hasn't read Schweitzer's paper. He also misses the fact that the posited heme-containing comounds and hemoglobin breakdown products are only hypothesized.
What Wieland doesn't mention in relation to the 2004 find is that the medullary bone material wasn't originally pliable, it was hydrated first, dipped in acid to remove calcium phosphate. It was not "fresh." Also, Schweitzer has not proven that the material represents original material from the dinosaur.

Books

★ ''Dragons Of The Deep: Ocean Monsters Past And Present'' (2005)

★ ''The Genesis Files: Meet 22 Modern Day Scientists Who Believe in a Six-Day Recent Creation'' (edited, 2004)

★ ''101 Signs of Design: Timeless Truths from Science'' (2002)

★ ''Walking Through Shadows'', with Ken Ham (2002)

★ ''One Blood: The Biblical Answer to Racism'', with Ken Ham and Don Batten (1999)

★ ''Stones and Bones: Powerful Evidence Against Evolution'' (1996)

★ ''The Answers Book: Detailed Answers at Layman's Level to 12 of the Most Asked Questions on Creation/evolution'' (1992)

★ ''The Answers Book'', with Ken Ham, Don Batten, and Jonathan Sarfati (1999)

References

1. [1]
2. Hurd explained "all the analysis published in the science literature by Mary H. Schweitzer and her colleagues through 1997 demonstrate that they have found a very well preserved bone that had little or no water penetration into the core area from where they drew their biomolecule samples."
3. http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3547

External links

★ Sensational dinosaur blood report! Dr. Wieland's 1997 article published in ''Creation'' '19'(4) p.42-43

★ Still soft and stretchy An article for the Creation Ministries International website by Dr. Wieland (March 2005)

★ Creation Ministries International biography, and links to his ''Creation'' magazine, ''Journal of Creation'', and other articles

★ Answers in Creation, an Old Earth Creationist site reviews of the claims of Wieland